Friday, 7 October 2016

The Twelve Weeks of Christmas - Week Three - The Advent Calendar of Books

This year Phoebe is way too young for the traditional chocolate advent calendar but I still wanted to do something. I'm not about to take any credit for this idea or indeed, pretend it was mine, I unashamedly pinched it from Pinterest...

The Advent Calendar of Books.

Phoebe loves a bedtime story and this has been part of her bedtime routine right from when she was probably around eight weeks old. Bath, bottle and story, bed. It works for us so we're going with it.

So, the idea is, you have 24/25 picture books (depending on whether you want it to end on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day) and the child/ren open one every day to be read before bed. I loved the idea as soon as I saw it but thought, jeez, that could work out pretty damn expensive with all those books. This is where The Book People came to the rescue.

I had already bought a Christmas Collection of books in their sale at the beginning of the year which gave you ten books for about £7 I think. The pile above is the pile ready to be wrapped for Phoebe this year and in total has cost me no more than £25. That sounds a lot for an advent calendar but the way I look at it is that I can do this again for the next five or six years using the same books - by the time Christmas comes around again they'll have forgotten which books they've read or love them that much they can't wait to read them again.

It's definitely worth keep checking their website as they often run % off deals throughout the year so you can always grab a bargain.

I've bought some little tags to go on each book too to help build the excitement around how many sleeps to go. I got these from eBay for around £2 and there's quite a few designs to choose from.

I would have loved this as a kid, I was a real bookworm, so I'm really hoping Phoebe will too. Will let you know! K x